Reading the Body in the Eighteenth Century Novel

Juliet McMaster's study looks at the various codes by which 18th century novelists made the minds of their characters legible through their bodies. She explores the discourses of medicine, physiognomy, gesture and facial expression, completely familiar to contemporary readers but not to us, in ways that enrich our reading of such classics as "Clarissa" and "Tristram Shandy", as well as of novels by Fanny Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen.